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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   20880 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 2, 2026

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I really don't like making grand pronouncements (I think it's a bit narcissistic) but since I seem to have a reputation on The Motte I think it's only fair to take my licks:

  • Midterms were worse than I thought. I would have guessed 49-53 Senate seats for Dems and 220-230 seats in the House.
  • The collapse is so bad that I think it necessitates some new theories about how American politics works. I.e. I don't think Trump's record right now is worse than Bush in 2006 or Obama in 2010 or Biden in 2022. Voters clearly disagree? Inflation reached 8% in 2022, gas right now is lower adjusted for inflation than it was under Obama.
  • Obviously, Iran is very unpopular. I still accept Trump's judgment that it was the right thing to do and I still believe that the war is (plainly) a military success. (Call me crazy!)
  • Trump is a fighter and is going to strike back. I think all calls for his impeachment or step down are bad politics and also bad reads of Donald Trump.
  • Texas with Blue governance would be worse value than California or Illinois, because you don't even have the nice beaches and beautiful cities. But predictions that Texas is about to precipitously decline are overblown. (Texas has a lot of hot smart and beautiful people.)
  • I think the AI buildout will probably not stop, although it will have to reassess. I maintain that AI is so powerful that it's bad for Democrats to hand it over to Republicans even if it polls extremely well in the short and medium-term. I expect that a lot of AI Pause rhetoric will merely grease the wheels for Dems and tech to come to a new arrangement.
  • A lot of my friends who were loyal Trump guys are crashing out now. I do think it's still too soon to call this the death of MAGA, and there is no going back to the old establishment Republican consensus.
  • We're probably closing the window, globally, on a 10-year exuberance of populism and replacing it with something else. To those inclined to gloat, I suspect that whatever comes next will actually be worse for everybody. (For example, imagine a MAGA-Groyper fusion.) (You're going to miss Trump when he's gone.)
  • I think the Groypers might be earning a place in the future.
  • There have been a lot of predictions about Dems undergoing a realignment 10 years after the Republican realignment. I don't think this will happen at all. DSA and center-lib-left Dems will coexist quite peaceably in the way that only political allies that hate each other can.
  • The results were worse than I expected and losing will carry a lot of political consequences. But I maintain that midterms still matter for very little. The powers that Democrats are unlocking for themselves (such as imperiling the future of a Republican SCOTUS) are weak compared to the powers of the president.
  • I do not believe that Democrats are on the cusp of a permanent one-party state or any other despair narratives I see on the right. I don't think this will be true even if they do win in 2028.

Blah blah blah, words words words, excuses excuses, feel free to get your licks in now.

It’s not a victory because as I and everyone else here told told you over and over again the war wasn’t actually over and when the Democrats blow out the Midterms, Trump will have to cut an embarrassing and humiliating deal. The Iranian regime is still around and the US accomplished almost none of their stated war aims (only sank their blue water navy). The best case scenario is now the pre-war consensus. Nobody will ever be dumb enough again to try to topple this regime, so it completely backfired. They will almost assuredly keep their nuclear material. It was a national humiliation.

Like what pisses me off the most is that the rest of the world is now going to have to pay a Hormuz toll for however many next decades because of this crap. And if things get worse, we may also end up having to pay a Bab Al Mandeb toll to Yemen. The US is effectively insulated from this becuase it's literally on the other side of the world but the rest of us all have to suffer

The US is effectively insulated from this because it's literally on the other side of the world but the rest of us all have to suffer

If you consider paying back taxes for failure to reinvest in your own defense/sovereignty "suffering", sure. You either pay for a modern military up front, or you pay for it through the increased price of goods and services after the US decides to start yet another war in your backyard.

You'd think the Eurozone would have learned that the first time, back in '73. But no, they decided to not only throw away their military power, but their financial power, too. An Iran actively allied with Europe (perhaps harder now, too many of the wrong type of Muslim [from Iran's perspective] moved there), or at least dealt with under a European-controlled financial system (rather than an American one), has no incentive to start doing this. Yet, the opposite has happened.

So, woe to the vanquished. The EU and/or Britain are more than capable of building and operating a swarm of drones or CIWS systems themselves. Or, they could get so mad about being [Euro]poor that they go to war and pacify the Silk Road that way. European countries have a lot of excess population to burn through, last I checked that surplus ain't exactly too fond of the Iranians either, and they have nowhere to run if the conscription vans come for them anyway (other than "back from whence they came", which... well, mission accomplished).

Just throw professional-athlete money at the smart twentysomethings [to not take that better job offer in the US] and get out of their way. You don't even have to make cuts to benefits- just print money and inflate the currency. Most people are too stupid to figure that out given they still haven't figured out that's the reason they're poor post-Covid.

'If'? And only to Hormuz and Yemen?

Mate, the last year hasn't just shown the limits of the American ability to mitigate drone attacks on maritime shipping. It also included a demonstration that the Europeans and even Chinese could not or would not provide expeditionary security for the maritime commons they import substantial inelastic goods through.

On one hand, at the time this was a glorious success of european sovereignty in avoiding entrapment and resisting Trump. On the other, every relevant actor along the Asia-to-Europe maritime corridors has reason too look at how they can apply their own tax on European imports and Chinese exports, given how hard it is to prevent (and how few are willing to try). When it becomes apparent you'll keep paying regardless of the cost- and that is the nature of an inelastic good- then you should expect more people to try to become middlemen.

Most states won't go to outright state sponsors of piracy, but the actors that do? Somali pirates from the last decade will be quaint in retrospect.

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about how drones represented both a military revolution and a revolution in military affairs as a technology. The former is technology doing an established role better, and the later is technology that changes the relationship between societies and the conduct of war itself. In that post, which began with how I thought drones were going to be disruptive to the international order as many people thought AI will be, I included the following-

In other words, the drone revolution- both as a military revolution and revolution in military affairs- cuts both ways. It will drastically increase the cost of American adversaries trying to pursue revanchist invasions. It will also drastically increase the cost of American expeditionary adventures abroad, or even to US opponents in any given conflict who can send asymmetric forces to attack distant airbases elsewhere. It is going to lead to a lot of blood in parts of the world where things aren't so clear cut, whether it's already ongoing conflicts, sectarian divisions where both sides can credibly reach drone capabilities, and/or efforts by geopolitical actors to create drone-empowered insurgencies where they don't already exist. Costs and casualties will climb.

If you noticed that there was no reference to political candidates in this, that was the point- this is a foreign policy problem driven by dynamics beyond any candidate's ability to prevent. No matter what a candidate does, great harm and damages will occur around the world regardless- and thus everyone will 'fail.' Anyone with an interest in saying 'they didn't succeed' will have more than enough to fill the confirmation bias regardless of how well they do relatively, and there is unlikely to be any credible or plausible metric of what 'success' looks like going forward.

Congratulations- we're here. A multi-decade pre-existing conflict between a revolutionary-ideology state and its regional neighbors metasized into a broader conflict when regional players brought in external allies, and the combination of what was functionally an air raid campaign and the opposing drone insurgency into neighboring states broke anachronistic understandings of international commerce.

And as it turns out, a relatively poor state in economically dire straits has matched the ability to leverage their drone-defense advantage with trying to extort regional waterways. As it also turns out, as unpopular as naval extortion is globally, spending blood and treasure to protect shipping is even more unpopular. So it's going to be spending treasure instead.

This was always going to happen. This is a matter of emerging capabilities and pre-existing incentives, not personalities or specific polities.

Iran is not the only state to feel it needs money, nor is it the only one near a naval trade route, nor is it the only one with drones. It wasn't even the first. Ukraine had that distinction with the black sea campaign years ago. Complaining that the good times wouldn't have ended had Trump not pulled the trigger is like blaming WW1 on an assassination and not the web of alliances and German cult of the offense and the rise of nationalist identities within empires.

the rest of the world is now going to have to pay a Hormuz toll for however many next decades because of this crap.

Maybe the rest of the world should have done something about it then, instead of sitting around and dunking on Trump.

Do what? Every time USA doing something bad, the response of civilized world is just wait and hope it ceases to do bad.

The post-ceasefire Strait of Hormuz ship-escorting was the window of opportunity for the 'civilized world' to shape the prospect of future maritime protection racket fees, because it was the chance for non-belligerents to credibly signal where they stood on the spectrum from sovereign defense of free maritime traffic through international waters to willingness to accept unilateral maritime boundary changes and corresponding extortion.

This might (or might not) have mattered because the Iranian strategy would have factored an international maritime escort coalition into their negotiating strategy differently than a US-only effort. Had, say, French and Indian vessels been escorting Qatari LNG and kept escorting despite the first few UAV attacks, then the Iranian strategic forecasts might have differed, seen it as a non-viable strategy, and shifted course month within a few months.

Instead, the Iranians (correctly) judged that the civilized world would rather pay protection racket fees than to defend their flagged shipping, would offset the blame of continued attacks onto the Americans, and so made the bet that they should prolong the conflict past the mid-terms to increase their negotiating leverage. Which is just as likely to be increased beyond 2029, since the midterms don't actually compel Trump to make a deal and in various ways make it less likely. Which could mean years more of the Strait of Hormuz disruption.

The civilized world's chance for a quicker off ramp to a world less likely to have tolls was back in April-May. The collective (non)decision since then has given the uncivilized world the better part of a year to start forming their own thoughts on further ways to get their own cut.

If the USA just vanished in thin air tomorrow Iran would still be bombing ships and charging tolls. So maybe if the rest of the world doesn't like tolls they should do something about it.

The question stands: do what?

Comment above pretty much explains it better than I can, I agree with this 100%: https://www.themotte.org/post/4059/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/495534?context=8#context

Trump is the whole reason that's happening, if it is. "Dunking on" him is entirely appropriate.

Maybe, but it won't help them resolve their situation at all

Maybe if Trump hadn't started bombing Iran in the first place we'd still have no tolls on Hormuz.

Yeah but so what. If the rest of the world would rather have tolls than lift a single finger, then they deserve it all the more.

This kind of mentality is why the right just lost Texas, South Carolina, and friggin' Mississippi.

Ideology is a hell of a drug, and some people just have a hard time letting it go. Not targeting anyone in particular, but at some point you have to ask yourself why you bother having these conversations when it gets to this point; and just walk away.

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